Trashing the Joint: a Short Clinton Story

Imagine, if you will, a couple named Sadie and Earl. Being new in town, you agreed to let them house sit when you were attending a family funeral.

Upon your return, you found crack pipes strewn on the lawn, cigarette burns in the carpet, various unsavory characters passed on on your furniture.

It now so happens that Sadie and Earl are planning to provide the same service for a friend, Linda.

And so you tell Linda what you know.

Sadie and Earl are not pleased, and nor are their friends who were looking forward to their participation to the upcoming bacchanal.

They confront you and call you “a dick” for telling Linda what she is likely to encounter should she engage Sadie and Earl’s services.

***

Now imagine another couple: Bill and Hillary. Hillary is currently trying to gain access to another property, albeit one valued several orders of magnitude higher than your split level colonial which Sadie and Earl trashed.

Telling the truth about Hillary is sure to arouse the displeasure of their friends, Joe, Gene, Joan, Amanda and Sid, among others.

And they too will call Sanders supporters “dicks” for saying what needs to be said. In fact, that particular suggestion seems to have become an approved (possibly focus group tested) phrase having made its appearance multiple times on blogs and social media in recent days and weeks.

Why they are doing it is, of course, obvious.

Just as Sadie and Earl don’t want anyone to know about the wreckage they inflicted, Bill and Hillary’s scam requires that no daylight shines on their past record and associations. That goes, in particular, for Hillary’s cozy relationship with the banks and bankers who pillaged the economy, her cheerleading for military intervention, her close ties to pharmaceutical companies, her enthusiasm for the war on drugs and mandatory sentences, her advocacy of welfare reform now bearing fruit in the form or record levels of child poverty and her long history of official and unofficial dishonesty.

And they attempt to turn the lights out the old fashioned way: by personally attacking those who dare to tell the truth.

***

There is of course a big difference between the two couples. Sadie and Earl’s friends’ smears won’t go much further than the local watering hole.

Those of Bill and Hillary are backed by a billion dollar campaign war chest, armies of communications specialists, focus groups and a compliant media ready to promote as fact any lie they invent.

They know how to take advantage of the mathematical certainty that there are “dicks” among the millions who have volunteered for the Sanders campaign- though it is striking that they almost always fail to provide any direct evidence of actual “dickishness”.

The more honest of Clinton’s supporters likely are taken aback when they are confronted by unpleasant facts raised by Clinton’s competitors for the nomination, many of which they likely knew little about it.

Some, however, are simply hacks knowing full well the rottenness of the goods they are trying to sell.

Their business model requires that the truth is obscured.

Our job, and that of any honest person, is to make sure that it comes out. Whatever names we are called in the process is a small price to pay.

John Halle blogs at Outrages and Interludes. He tweets at: jghalle.